


The tigers come at night

by xRinsexRepeatx



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, DADT Repeal, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14832281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xRinsexRepeatx/pseuds/xRinsexRepeatx
Summary: The day that the news of the DADT repeal came through the weekly data stream from Earth, John went by his day as usual. If he took an evening run that got so long that he could barely stand in the shower after, nobody needed to know.





	The tigers come at night

**Author's Note:**

> I _am_ trying to get back on my anime bullshit, this just had to happen first

\- - * - -

The day that the news of the DADT repeal came through the weekly data stream from Earth, John went by his day as usual. If he took an evening run that got so long that he could barely stand in the shower after, nobody needed to know.

\- - * - -

Nothing changed. Sure, there were some social stutters, but a couple of crises, some evidence that they were all still brothers in arms before anything, and everything was back to normal.

The news had nothing to do with John. He was the military commander. The love of his life was Atlantis, because it had to be. And he did love her. He did.

\- - * - -

Nights got longer.

Exhaustion from missions didn't help, running hard and fast until his hands were shaking didn't help.

John laid in his bed and thought about sand, creeping in everywhere. Your ears, your belly button, the 4 inch gash on your thigh. Of being too hot and your skin too tight and waking up with Holland dead in his arms.

Holland had never talked about a girl back home, and John hadn't asked. He'd never asked John either, and John hadn't told.

He'd woken up with Holland dead in his arms, but it had taken him a second to realize because bodies don't get cold in the desert, just still, and John hadn't thought. Because that was his own version, the one that worked, the only one that didn't hurt as much.

Don't ask, don't tell, don't think.

He tried to hold on to it, that final one.

But nights got longer.

\- - * - -

They'd been on a planet, and there'd been a harvest festival, and maybe John had drank a bit too much of the drink that tasted a bit like mulch, but tonight he didn't mind the distance to the dawn and so he couldn't give a damn.

They'd been given tents, because this festival was held out of town, on a plain surrounded by crop fields, and John had been the last to pick so of course more than half of the floor space and all of the air was taken up by Rodney.

Rodney's breathing was loud through his nose, and resonated in his large ribcage, in a way a woman's breaths could never do. Rodney was large, and loud, and smelled kind of ripe after the long walk from the town and an evening of sitting too close to a fire in the middle of summer.

Rodney's hands were thick and clumsy but lithe over a keyboard, always clammy because he was always nervous, thinking lightyears a minute about his own self-preservation in a way that meant he was the last person likely to end up bleeding out in the middle of a desert.

John felt a giggle break his face, as something broke. Rodney huffed beside him.

"What's so funny?" he said, defensive, always paranoid, Least Likely to Die.

"Don't ask." John's voice tore out his throat that felt dry with sand, and kind of wanted to giggle again, because what else was he going to do, he felt warm, and drunk, and lightheaded from the barely viable amount of oxygen that Rodney left him with.

Don't tell, don't think, who are they to tell me what to do, it's worked this far, he thought, and after waiting forever, he fell asleep.

\- - * - -

It wasn't too much, at first.

But it felt like a rage, building under his skin, itching in his teeth and fists and tongue.

It wasn't Rodney's fault, except for how it was. It wasn't his fault, but that didn't do a lick of difference, because it built and built until John couldn't sleep at all anymore.

They argued more. It couldn't be called bickering, not with how they both showed teeth, got up in each other's faces, breathed hard and John craved the flush of anger in Rodney's cheeks, the indignation.

It wasn't too much, at first, it wasn't until it was, and their voices spun louder and louder and John punched Rodney right in the jaw.

Rodney held his hand over it, wide fingers splayed, eyes full of outrage and reproach.

John felt better than he had in a while. John felt fucking awful.

John didn't know what he was feeling.

If he could choose it, he would feel nothing at all.

He got out of the talk with Heightmeyer, evaded with a crisis and a near-death mission.

He took Rodney off his team.

The nights went on forever.

\- - * - -

John did sleep.

But when he did there were dreams, vague ones full of heat and skin and a heavy body on top of his that took up all the oxygen, and they woke him up, sweating and gasping and desperately hard. So he always got up, got in the shower, jacked himself hard and fast and went for a run, and told himself he didn't sleep, because if he didn't he couldn't dream, and then it hadn't happened.

\- - * - -

He and Rodney weren't friends anymore. They used to joke and play chess and have lunch together, used to sit out on the pier with a six pack. He hadn't even realized how much time they spend together until they didn't.

He had so much time, and desperate to fill it he ran, and ran, and ran.

It couldn't go on, and it didn't.

A mission finally went to hell and John woke up in the infirmary full of tubes and covered in bruises and sutures.

He could do nothing but lie there, and for the first few days the pain was enough, the pain kept him busy, then one day it didn't.

He woke up in the infirmary again, the air full of Keller's reprimanding voice because what had he been thinking, where had he even been trying to go, he could've hurt himself.

But he hadn't. He hadn't been thinking, and now the pain was worse and Keller put something in his IV and then there was finally absolutely nothing.

\- - * - -

Keller prescribed him sleeping pills, and things got better after that.

He didn't dream anymore.

When John could go on missions again, Rodney was back on the team, and things were better. They weren't _good_ , but John didn't dream anymore so slowly but surely they relearned to be civil.

Rodney had asked him before, while they were yelling, what the hell his problem was, but he didn't ask anymore, and he'd never asked for real. So John didn't tell him. And, besides, it wasn't a problem anymore, because John didn't dream, didn't wake up aching to forget.

The sleeping pills cut off the nights, and John found he was grateful.

\- - * - -

They were on another planet, and there was another harvest festival, but this time it was Rodney who'd had too much of the drink, and this time it hadn't just been fermented. It had _done_ something, it must have, because when John got into the tent that he hadn't expected Rodney to want to share with him, Rodney wasn't asleep, and his face was flushed, and at first John thought it was for some other reason and let his eyes trail downwards because John was disgusting, but then Rodney took a short, shaky breath and John's eyes snapped up to see that Rodney's were red-rimmed.

"I - I don't know what I did." Rodney sounded drunk and small and so, so sad. "I've tried to figure it out, _I've_ tried, and I _can't_. I can't -- " he took another shaking breath. "Whatever I did, I'm sorry."

He sounded broken, as if John had broken something inside of him, too.

John didn't say anything, just laid down next to him, only taking off his boots because he was still on active duty, kept his eyes forward and tried to tune out the waver in Rodney's breaths.

"You can't even look at me." Rodney's voice cracked. "How can I not know what I did, when you can't even look at me?"

John kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, up at the sky as if he could see it through the canvas, and he knew he had to keep his mind carefully blank, but he didn't think about why because that would be _thinking_ , and he couldn't, he _wouldn't_ \--

"I miss you, John. I miss us," Rodney said, resigned, and it cut up a four inch gash in John's chest, and he felt too hot, and his skin too tight, and he had to get out of there so he sat up, he could still make a run for it --

\-- and Rodney's heavy hand was on his arm, wasn't holding him down but made it just as impossible to leave.

"If -- ", and, no, Rodney, _you know the rules_ , "If I didn't do something, is it... Is it something I _didn't_ do?"

And, damn him, Rodney was smarter than was good for either of them, sometimes, and he never knew when to just _let it go_ \--

Instead, Rodney's hand went to John's shoulder, a light pressure urging him to turn around, and John did because it wasn't a question. Rodney's eyes were still swollen but they were bright with something else now, with figuring something out. John kept his eyes fixed somewhere beyond Rodney's ear.

"This all started when that _ridiculous_ policy was finally repealed, didn't it? And I -- " Rodney swallowed, and his slanted mouth quivered, and he looked so _lost_. "Should I have asked?"

And John wanted to scoff, he did, he wanted to twist his mouth into a sardonic smile and say something derisive, but instead his jaw was like a vice and his hands were trembling and twitching against his BDUs and he had to turn his head away.

But Rodney didn't know when to quit, and the fingers on John's shoulders tightened, urging him to turn around again as Rodney said, "I just, it doesn't change anything --"

And John giggled, because that was the most _stupid_ thing, goddamnit McKay, they'd both lost their minds because John couldn't stop giggling and then he couldn't breathe as a pain like he'd never felt before hit him, that went all the way in.

"John?" Rodney said, unsure, then again, "John," more urgent, "breathe," and John tried, he did, but there was a four inch gash in his chest and it was full of sand and --

Then Rodney was all around him, _hugged him_ , like they were, like he was -- and it was as if Rodney gave him some of his oxygen, because breathing was easier even though the air burned like it was full of acid.

Rodney held him with thick, strong arms, and he smelled like failing deoderant, and the stubble on his cheek was rough against John's own in a way a woman's cheek could never be. John's hands, still trembling, found a home in the damp back of Rodney's t-shirt, fisted it as if he wanted to rip the fabric and he breathed, one burning stream of air after another.

He didn't _want_ this, because he'd already _had_ his first kiss with Stacy in high school, he'd already _done_ this, the whole pathetic nine yards, the embarrassing damn _fumbling_ , he was forty god-damned years old and it wasn't _fair_ \--

A sob was wrenched out of him, pulled from his chest like a barbed knife, ripping him up on the way out. Rodney held him tighter. Sweat was beginning to build up between their faces, John's face was wet and hot and -- oh, no, that was tears, wasn't it.

Then there was nothing he could do but let it happen, let his body shake and choke as sob after sob broke out of his lungs, keep his fingers tight in Rodney's shirt as Rodney held him even tighter, as if he could hold John together as he just kept breaking.

\- - * - -

When John woke up, the first thing he noticed was the quiet.

He was warm, but not too hot, and there was a heavy arm slung over his waist, and a solid body pressed against his back.

He didn't particularly feel his skin at all and he was waking up in Rodney's arms. Alive.

He rubbed at his eyes, to get rid of the crystalline salt that stuck his eyelids together. Rodney was breathing loud and heavy, and every half-snored exhale was like a resuscitation, oxygen transferred.

It was as if he'd cried an ocean and washed out all the sand. He couldn't feel it anymore, couldn't feel the chafing, the sting of it, couldn't feel the rage thrumming under his skin.

There was only quiet. Quiet, and Rodney, and John didn't have to keep himself from thinking, because his mind was clear as sky.

\- - * - -

They sat at the pier, looking out at the endless ocean.

John took a swig of beer as Rodney rambled about something outrageous one of his scientists had suggested, his wide fingers flying through the air as if he could paint the scene in front of them.

John looked out at the endless ocean, and felt, finally, really knew, that the desert was an entire galaxy away.

There was nothing here but water. Oceans, and sky.

And they told him something, the city did, the ocean, the sky, Rodney rambling beside him.

They told him, that one day, he could be happy.

John took another swig of beer.

He was alive.

\- - * - -


End file.
